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Richardson Revealed: A new plan for the old asylum

Tonight (Thursday, October 16) Tim Tielman of the Campaign for Greater Buffalo History, Architecture & Culture unveils its proposal for the restoration of the long-neglected H. H. Richardson Towers and surrounding grounds, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.

Click on image for full sized version

Tielman will present its plan for the Richardson complex at 7pm at St. John’s Church on Colonial Circle. The public is encouraged to attend.

The Buffalo State Asylum, which began construction in 1870 and took 20 years to complete, represented the first and grandest collaboration between the building architect Richardson and the landscape architect Olmsted, both in their primes and pre-eminent in their fields. Beginning in 1965, with the construction of the Strozzi building, the Buffalo Psychiatric Center moved patient care, and eventually all its activities, out of the Richardson complex, which fell into disrepair.

Despite its neglect, it was added to the State and National Registers of Historic Places in 1973, and in 1986 it was registered as a National Historic Landmark. In 2002, a group of plaintiffs led by the Preservation Coalition of Erie County sued New York State for its failure to maintain the buildings. The lawsuit succeeded in State Supreme Court, then was reversed on appeal. But the suit led to a deal wherein Governor George Pataki committed $100 million to stabilization, restoration, and reuse of the buildings and grounds. (That amount is now about $76 million, thanks to diversion of funds to other projects.) The deal also led to the formation of the Richardson Center Corporation, led by Buffalo News publisher Stan Lipsey, to create and administer a plan.

We’re still waiting on the Richardson Center Corporation’s plan, though it is forthcoming; Lipsey is pushing for an architectural museum, a visitors center, a signature restaurant, and private development—apartments, offices, a hotel perhaps—of parts of the grounds.

The degree to which the Richardson Center Corporation’s design will seek to regain Olmsted’s and Richardson’s original intentions is unknown, but Tielman says that’s the point from which the Campaign for Greater Buffalo’s plan jumps off: He imagines a continuous, walkable ribbon of Olmsted landscape that runs from the Richardson complex all the way to Forest Lawn and Delaware Park.

“What is of value here is this remarkable and historic complex of buildings set on an equally historic grounds,” Tielman says. “We begin with that.”

To read more about the Richardson complex, visit the Campaign for Greater Buffalo’s blog (greaterbuffalo.blogs.com) and the Richardson Center Corporation’s Web site (www.richardson-olmsted.com). To see more images from Tielman’s presentation on Thursday evening, visit AV Daily at Artvoice.com.

geoff kelly

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